A printing plate is a tool that transfers your inked design onto a material. Kind of like a rubber stamp, but larger. Print plates are made of various material depending on the print process. For flexographic printing, they’re made out of a photopolymer, rubber-like material. For lithographic printing, they can be made of a metal or plastic material. Plates are mounted on a flat surface or a giant cylinder, inked, and rolled onto whatever you’re printing. Customers with small order requirements can either restrict the number of colours in the label (which reduces the number of printing plates required), and hence reduce the start-up costs, or print their labels digitally (bypassing the printing plate process), at an increased cost per label, but without the cost of plates.